Turn 15 · The lunch lady of hollow ridge playthrough

Spend the afternoon watching more southern shows until supper. everyone in the room calling each other tammy and hon. no name of talia, priya and the other names you all had before getting here never existed. all 12 of yours name are tammy.

The afternoon goes down easy, like sweet tea on a hot day. The channel finds its stride — a game show where contestants guess the price of a casserole dish, then a sitcom, then an old gospel hour — and the twelve of you call out answers and hollers of encouragement from the folding chairs, every voice the same warm drawl. 'You know that woman from somewhere, Tammy,' you say, pointing at the screen, and Tammy nods and says 'I surely do, hon,' and neither of you can place where, and it doesn't matter a lick. Every Tammy answers when called. Every hon lands where it's aimed. The names that used to hang on these women — the ones on the missing-persons flyer, eleven names and yours — don't come up, because there is nothing for them to attach to anymore. You reach for the auburn-haired woman's name out of some old habit and find nothing there, just Tammy, sitting right beside you, patting your knee.

Somewhere in the third show the talk drifts off the screen and onto the floor. 'Y'all remember when Tammy burned the gravy that first week?' somebody says, and the room laughs, and Tammy with the blonde bob says 'I did not burn it, it was scorched on purpose, that's flavor,' and the laughter doubles. It's a good story. It happened here. You were all there.

When the gospel hour winds down, the hunger arrives on schedule, right on the dot, and twelve bodies rise from twelve chairs at the same moment, no signal needed. 'Supper, y'all,' Tammy says, and the line forms without forming, everyone drifting kitchenward down the corridor, slippers and soft feet slapping linoleum.

You pass the wall clock in the hallway and it reads 8:30, hands exactly where they've been since the first night, ticking along steady as anything, and it doesn't occur to you to wonder at it. A clock tells time. This one says 8:30. That's all a clock ever needs to say.

In the kitchen the walk-in stands open, cold air rolling out, and Tammy is already pulling the case of french toast sticks for tomorrow's breakfast onto the counter, and the rest of you wash hands and tie aprons, and supper gets underway, and it is very good.